


drunk words (sober thoughts)

by C_AND_B



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: 4 + 1, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drunk!Lena, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 21:25:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16462616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C_AND_B/pseuds/C_AND_B
Summary: It goes like this: 1. Lena gets incredibly drunk, 2. She inevitably says something that makes Kara's heart stop in its place, 3. Kara remembers how to breathe and Lena remembers... pretty much nothing at all.





	drunk words (sober thoughts)

**Author's Note:**

> so I'm trying this new thing where I don't let the wordcount get out of hand because I'm busy. this loosely comes from a prompt that has existed in my asks for like eight years and then just escalated.
> 
> as per, sorry for any mistakes, hope it's not shit and enjoy!!

Being drunk was a foreign concept to Kara for much of her life. It wasn’t something she had ever truly considered when she was on Krypton, too young to truly be interested in the concept, too obedient to ever think of breaking the rules set in front of her by people she placed on a pedestal from the second she even knew what that phrase meant.

And then she was on Earth. A place where even the strongest drink was filtered by her body in seemingly a second. That didn’t mean that when she turned twenty-one Alex didn’t try her hardest to get Kara drunk which mostly just entailed an, almost good enough but not quite, super-high-proof alcohol and a very drunk Alex who had been sipping in solidarity.

That was not to say that Kara didn’t understand being drunk, didn’t understand the pull of getting away from your own mind for a little while. That she could understand completely. That she could completely relate to when she considered the handful of times she had experienced any sort of inebriation on Earth since finding the alien bar, since finding a safe space.

Being drunk was a foreign concept to Kara for much of her life.

A drunk Lena Luthor was an entirely different concept all together and Kara had never really considered what it would be like until it happened.

She never considered how Lena’s voice would drop an octave, how it would slip into something more comfortable, how it would run through Kara’s veins like honey and seduce her ears with nothing more than a few half-husked phrases and jumbled jargon.

She never considered how loose Lena’s body would become, how her shoulders would drop from their perch of both holding up the world and pushing it out, how her hand gestures would become so much more animated yet so sloppy, how she would sway like she was dancing to a music no one else could here (and also only just be teetering on the edge of having balance).

She never considered hooded eyes or pouty lips, or the sudden outpouring of affection from someone who usually seemed to edge just out of reach of touch. She never quite considered how crazy it would drive her, how much more it would make her feel for someone she never once expected to ever feel _this_ for in the first place.

But, ultimately, in all her non-considerations, the thing that Kara would have factored in as the last possibility in a million possibilities, is how open Lena would become. And, that wasn’t to say that Kara was under the impression Lena lied to her. Kara knew very well that all it took to convince Lena to spill secrets was a well timed pout and imploring eyes, and that half the time it didn’t even require that for Lena to search out Kara as some kind of confident.

No, what Kara meant was, Lena was _open._ So very open. A book ripped so open the spine almost split. A door so open it threatened to rip off the hinges. A sky so open and clear that you could see every single speck of blue it had to offer.

But maybe open wasn’t the right word. Kara had been toying with it for days, mulling it over in her mind, mentally penning it down, scratching it out and penning it down again because maybe it didn’t fit quite right, maybe the best way to explain it was uninhibited. _Uninhibited_. No sense of self-conscious restraint. None of Lena’s usual mental scripting of conversations to avoid saying the wrong thing. None of her trying to paint an image of perfection so that there was nothing to critique of her when the critiques inevitably came.

_Human_. So very human. So very lovable. And also, _so very annoying_. See, Kara loved an open Lena, loved the uninhibited, human Lena but she also very much hated that it always occurred when Lena was drunk, too drunk, can’t-remember-what-you-did-the-night-before drunk, which meant that Kara could do nothing about the things Lena said to her when was inebriated.

_(And she really wanted to do something about the things Lena said to her when she was inebriated)._

It starts off small.

It starts, like many things begin with Lena and Kara, in Lena’s office.

Or rather it starts with an exasperated call on Jess’ behalf to Kara, bemoaning Lena’s refusal to leave her office for a few hours to have an actual sleep, one that doesn’t involve awkward angles for the neck and a cold, hard desk (in their wildest imaginings Lena might even eat an actual meal instead of protein bars and whatever else she can nibble with one free hand but that was a pipe dream).

Kara makes it to L-Corp with a speed rather suspicious for a human but Jess doesn’t bat an eye at Kara’s poor excuse of already being in the area, simply pointing her towards the offer with an eye roll and a fond smile that speaks volumes to the admiration Jess holds for Lena, even if it’s often hidden beneath obvious annoyance at her boss’s inability to act like a functional human being.

When she finally makes it inside, she doesn’t find Lena sitting at her desk, diligently working herself into dust. Nor does she find her on the couch, well that’s a lie, a half-lie, she does find Lena sprawled half on the floor, half on the couch with a half-drunk glass on amber liquid hanging precariously from her finger tips and threatening to spill onto the pristine office floor.

She doesn’t notice Kara at first, doesn’t notice much of anything as she runs her hands through her hair and hums the tune to a song that Kara is certain she’s never heard before but thinks she’d happily listen to on repeat for the rest of her life as long as it came from Lena’s lips. And then she notices her all at once, which is to say, that every inch of Lena lights up at the sight of Kara. Her eyes widen and her smile brightens and she hastily discards her glass in favour of pushing herself shakily to her feet in order to all but charge across the room and into Kara’s readily waiting arms.

_Uninhibited_. Her hug is uninhibited, and warm, and wrapped up in the scent of expensive scotch and something distinctly Lena that Kara can’t pinpoint but has her shivering in the embrace all the same (and yes, she realises that she couldn’t be more cliché if she tried but clichés became clichés for a reason, and Kara was particularly fond of this one).

“You’re here,” Lena mumbles into Kara’s neck, quiet enough that Kara thinks she wouldn’t have heard it if not for her superhearing, and with enough reverence and sense of _finally_ that Kara wonders if maybe this time Jess called less because of worry and more because she was asked. Kara wouldn’t be mad about that. She quite like Lena to need her, want her.

“I’m here and you’re drunk,” Kara points out needlessly, not releasing her grasp in the slightest. She tells herself it’s because she’s the only thing keeping Lena upright (it’s decidedly not because she’s the only reason keeping Lena upright).

Lena scoffs, “I’m not drunk. I’ve just had too much to drink.”

Kara doesn’t say that that’s the definition of drunk, though it does rest on the tip of her tongue and she thinks Lena can probably hear it clear as day in the laughter that rumbles through her body. Not that Lena cares in that moment, not that Lena seems to care about anything really in that snapshot of time, too busy nuzzling further into Kara’s neck, the tip of her somehow always cold nose finding the inevitable heat of Kara’s skin a little too alluring.

“You smell nice,” Lena breathes, lips ghosting aimlessly against Kara’s neck, and then presses a kiss to the newly erupted goosebumps with such purpose that the dichotomy sends Kara’s brain into a tailspin because Lena kissed her, she was drunk and half asleep, but she kissed her. For real.

“I should get you home.” Home and into bed. Her own bed, in her own apartment. Like Kara would go to her own apartment and get into her own bed, and think about all the ways she shouldn’t be thinking about Lena, and then getting mad at herself because she was thinking about Lena in all the ways she shouldn’t be thinking about _her best friend_ Lena.

“Home is nice. You’re like home. Warm, and safe, and nice. You’re really nice. That’s why you’re my favourite; did you know that you’re my favourite?”

Kara chuckles, “you’ve told me, once or twice,” finally partially extracting herself from Lena’s arms so she can use a free hand to collect up the other woman’s things and wave to Jess in a motion that says _Lena’s safe_ and _please go home already, you don’t get paid enough for this_ (only she for sure does, Lena never bought loyalty but she certainly rewarded it. Greatly).

“Well consider this thrice,” Lena says, following along with Kara’s movement without question. It takes almost no effort to get Lena to her apartment considering she practically lets Kara carry her there without a single complaint or comment about how she could do it just fine herself. Kara thinks she quite likes koala Lena, even if she’s rather fond of independent Lena too. She can like both.

They don’t say much as they make their way into Lena’s home, Lena half asleep and Kara simply enjoying the rhythmic flow of Lena’s breath. It’s not until she’s safely tucked her into her bed, shoes discarded somewhere or another, and a glass of water waiting for its inevitable requirement that Kara finds the words she’d been wanting to say for longer than she’d care to admit.

“You’re my favourite too.” She receives no response beyond a smile and a pleased puff of air but it’s enough to put a smile on Kara’s face as she leaves with a soft kiss to Lena’s forehead and a hastily written note that, in her sleepy state, she hopes legibly reads ‘ _brunch tomorrow if you’re up to it? xx’_. She presumes it’s good enough when Lena messages her in the morning with an affirmation and like five more messages apologising if she did or said anything embarrassing the night before.

Which kicks off the real torture sequence that is Kara’s life and the cycle of Lena’s alcohol amnesia.

* * *

 

It happens again a month later and Kara stupidly thinks that because she’s already heard the slurred syllables slipping from Lena’s own tongue that she’ll be ready for whatever greets her when she makes her way to Lena’s office. Stupid. So incredibly stupid.

She’s not prepared. Honestly, to say that she wasn’t prepared was a huge understatement. She was so unprepared that she cycled through actually somehow being prepared and then not being prepared at all once again. She was about as prepared as someone holding an umbrella in a monsoon, someone using a paper fan to cool down in the desert.

She’s not prepared to find Lena lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling with an oddly wide smile and a half buttoned shirt, in a happy daze and it’s kind of beautiful actually. In an understated way, in completely unobvious way, it’s beautiful.

The ease of the smile on Lena’s face and the slight smudge of her usually perfect red lips where the discarded bottle had been pressed haphazardly. The unplanned fan of her raven hair against the pristine white tile in a delicious dichotomy. The complete lack of tension in Lena’s body, every inch of her relaxed to the point where she almost looks like she’s about to genuinely melt into the floor.

She’s ethereal.

And Kara really needs to get her home.

But first, she falls onto the floor beside her, pretty much throws herself down beside Lena with a huff in a bid to pull her attention from whatever on the ceiling seemed to be so fascinating. It works like a charm. Lena’s gaze finds hers the second she’s settled into position, her lips settling into a wildly untamed smile that speaks to the level of drunk Lena is - drunk enough that she doesn’t care about anything, but not so drunk that she begins to care about everything once again. Happy.

“Hey, Drunky McDrunkface.” Lena falls into a fit of giggles like Kara had said the most original and funny thing she’d ever heard in her life. It makes her feel a little warm and a hell of a lot prouder than she has any real right to feel (not that she wasn’t going to feel it anyway).

“My blue-eyed angel.” And okay, Kara will admit that she maybe blushes at that, like from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes blushes - not that Lena would notice that for the life of her, she was pretty sure Lena was seeing at least four of her right now and every last one of them was blurry. Truthfully, Kara felt a little blurry, like the lines between their friendship and something else was blurred, and every want in her body was blurred, and she was extra blurry because she couldn’t do a single thing about any one thought in her head because Lena was drunk.

That doesn’t mean the temptation isn’t there to push the boundaries a little bit, doesn’t mean she’s able to resist asking, “your angel, huh?” Or that she doesn’t revel in the way Lena nods with far too much intensity to be considered normal. She definitely does both of those things.

“Sometimes I dream about you, about us, I think an us would be really nice. You and me. We. Two pods in a pea.” Her words are garbled, half spoken, half slurred and fuelled by some drunken forgetfulness to keep her cards close to her chest and yet Kara has never felt more breathless in her entire life, never felt her chest swell more with an emotion that she still can’t make herself put words to, but has been feeling a lot more commonly around Lena as of late, never felt more like her brain might actually be capable of melting out her ears.

Never felt _more_.

“Two peas in a pod,” Kara corrects.

“So you agree then,” Lena grins and Kara laughs in return, unable to resist the urge. “We should do something about that sometime. Not now though, now it’s time for sleep.” She curls up on the floor then without another thought, forming an incredibly uncomfortable looking ball like she was willing to nap there if she had to. And she does. By the time Kara thinks to shake her awake it’s already to no avail, to the point that Lena doesn’t even complain when Kara lifts her from the floor and to the car she asks Jess to call for outside the building.

Kara spends the drive to Lena’s apartment watching her with tender caution and wondering how that was all going to end. She gets the answer the next morning when Lena invites her to an apology lunch and tells her she’s drawing blanks about the night before once again, Kara doesn’t think it’s even the slightest bit melodramatic to say she feels like she’s been stabbed in the chest.

(Okay, so maybe a little...

Only a tiny bit though).

* * *

 

Lena’s drunkenness doesn’t always stem from her families amazing ability to drive her off the edge (even from all the way behind bars or wherever it is that Lillian Luthor slinks off to after she’s created some other palaver or another amongst the citizens of National City for Lena to inevitably take the heat for and have to fix - _not that Kara was bitter or anything_ ).

Sometimes it stems from her nerves at actually being invited to game night. Sometimes it comes from her trying to match Kara drink for drink, disregarding the knowledge that she’ll never quite win that competition. Sometimes it’s simply liquid courage because there’s no way she would ever agree to go to karaoke with Kara otherwise (Kara doesn’t even want to think about how much alcohol it would require for Lena to actually get up on stage).

And sometimes Lena’s drunkenness simply stems from her own amazing ability to create things that Kara knows are light-years ahead of what anyone else on Earth had even dreamed up yet.

Sometimes Lena creates something great and, in her forgetfulness that she actually has people who might want to celebrate that with her now, she does what she assumes is the next best thing, she goes to the bar nearest to her office and secretly pays the tabs of everyone there whilst randomly picking drinks from the menu like a reckless game of liver roulette.

That particular brand of sometimes was how Kara ended up picking up a call from an extremely amused bartender telling her that her girlfriend needed picking up - Kara blames the paparazzi pictures of her carrying Lena to her car for that one at first but when she gets there she thinks maybe the passing of that blame might’ve been a little premature.

Or a lot premature because Kara’s never seen Lena like this outside of her office.

Messy, and sleepy, and so stupidly smiley.

(Kara doesn’t notice the latter only occurs when she appears).

“Kara, you’re here! I was just talking about you to Dani here and now you’re here. That’s so weird. Good weird though, like magic. You’re good weird and nice and pretty and sometimes—sometimes I just really want to kiss you.” Kara blushes immediately and well, of course she does, of course she blushes because Lena just said that aloud, publicly and with a moon-eyed look that spoke volumes to how much she’d been thinking about that. Thinking about kissing Kara. Kara who had spent arguably more time thinking about how much she’d want that kiss too.

The bartender, who Kara presumes is Dani and the laughing voice down the phone who told her to _come collect her girl_ , is flicking her eyes from woman to woman with literally no sense of pretending she isn’t mentally cataloguing everything happening so that she can dine out on gossiping about it for the next few days. _At least._ Kara thinks it might haunt them a little longer than that.

“We should get you home,” Kara says, ignoring the confession and ignoring the knowing eyes watching her even more. Well, she says she’s ignoring the confession, and technically she is. Out loud. In her head she’s thinking about it too much and then some.

Kara likes to think that she has the patience of a saint, that, over the years of being Supergirl, she had learned to hold herself back, calm herself in moments of panic and take a step back to assess the best course of action, but it would be a lie to say that it was taking anything less than all of her willpower to not take Lena’s face in her hands and just kiss her.

_Really kiss her_.

Kiss her to the point where neither of them could remember their own names, or that they had an audience, or how standing was supposed to work on jellylike legs, or all of the semi-logical (and the other completely weak) reasons they’d been using to convince themselves not to do this.

Kara really wanted to do _this_.

But not now. Not like this. More than anything she wanted Lena to remember, she wanted her to not be able to stop herself from confessing or kissing Kara because the desire burning in her chest overwhelmed her, because she couldn’t think of anything other than finally doing it, not because she’d had too much to drink to keep a secret.

More than anything she wanted it to mean something.

“Can we go to yours? I like yours. It’s warm and everything smells like you and I like you.” _Rao Lena was really testing her willpower with everything she had in her drunk seduction arsenal._

“Sure, Lena, we can go to mine. Come on.” She picks up Lena’s jacket, slipping it over her shoulders as Lena lets out a little cheer at getting her own way (it’s ridiculous that it would even need celebration, like it wasn’t going to turn out like this, like Kara couldn’t count on a single hand the amount of times she’d actually managed to refuse Lena a single thing).

Lena takes her hand as they head for the exit, swift as anything and far defter that she has any right to be in her current state, and without any sense of deliberation that Kara had come to think of as characteristic of contact initiated by Lena. Any type of contact beyond a greeting hug usually came with its own five minute waiting period, filled with furrowed brows and a twisted mouth like Lena was somehow simultaneously talking herself in and out of doing something.

 But not now.

Now she scoops Kara’s hand into her own like it’s nothing, using her free one to wave jovially at a still far too amused and far too observant Dani. Kara can practically feel this public display coming back to bite her in the ass in the future - she finds she’s not all that upset about it considering Lena’s holding her hand, and snuggling up to her side, and being overall adorable.

And because, for one of the first times of Kara experiencing Lena drunk, she gets to wake up beside her in the comfort of her own bed, actually wakes up to Lena groaning and trying to block the subtle stream of light from the too small curtains, that Kara refused to admit were too small, but that didn’t quite meet in the middle of her window - except Lena’s not using her hands to block it, no, instead she grabs Kara’s body and twists in some half-hearted attempt to use her as a human sun shield.

Kara can’t silence the voice in the back of her head that tells her to drop her weight onto Lena in retaliation (okay, so she doesn’t even actually try to but tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to).

“You want breakfast?” She asks when she finally relents to Lena’s laughing pleas for her to get off and the gentle hands prodding at her body in an attempt of annoyance (considering the heat that spreads through her body with every new touch Kara thinks they don’t really have the exact intended effect but she does finally acquiesce to moving).

“Shouldn’t I be making you a thank you breakfast for saving me again? Sorry about that by the way, I hope I wasn’t too embarrassing.” And there was that word again.

And the thing is Kara would never call it embarrassing per se. In fact, it would take her a good few hours of listing adjectives to reach embarrassing. Currently she was thinking more heart-wrenchingly adorable or unwittingly seductive. But then she was also currently swarmed by the last part of that sentence, the most worrying part of that sentence, the part that was running and skipping through her head like a broken record.

_She hoped._

Lena _hoped_ she wasn’t too embarrassing. Like she didn’t know how she acted, like she once again didn’t remember spilling her feelings to Kara or cuddling to her side in bed and tangling her cold feet with Kara’s unnaturally warm ones or anything that might actually be useful in helping them out of this torturous relationship limbo.

And yes, Kara is acutely aware of the fact that she has a mouth and her own words and an ability to use both of those things and put an end to this whole mess (or a beginning maybe) but every time she almost takes initiative she’s stuck by the thought that maybe there’s a reason Lena never says it sober, that maybe she doesn’t really feel that way when she’s not drunk and emotional, that maybe she doesn’t want Kara when her mind is clear.

“You don’t remember?” Kara asks, words edging on shaky, eyes suddenly finding everything other than Lena so much more interesting and it’s like all the light go out. Just gone. Abrupt, bleak, the last thing left shining in the darkness the frown on Kara’s face.

“No? Why, was it bad?”

“No, no, you were normal. Super normal. Almost actually weirdly normal because it was just so totally... normal.” _Too much Kara. Tone it down_.

“Oh-kay?” Lena hesitates, clearly confused but obviously happy to let it slide if that’s what Kara wants to do, not that she wasn’t evidently noting this interaction in her mind for a later date. Kara had come to learn very early on that Lena rarely forgot a thing (except for the obvious exceptions that were the current bane of Kara’s entire existence).

“Breakfast then! We need to celebrate you and your amazing achievements properly which means pancakes. What’s your poison?”

“Blueberry?” Lena says timidly like there’s a right answer to the question and she’s a little afraid she’s picked the wrong one. Kara might’ve considered it adorable if it weren’t for the way it made her heart feel like it was crumbling into pieces.

“Great choice - a mountain of blueberry pancakes and too much coffee to be sensible coming your way. Don’t move!” Kara bounds from the room as fast as humanly possible, ducking her head back in with inhuman speed when she hears the telltale sounds of Lena trying to get out and help.“Nuh-uh, sit tight. I’ll be super speedy.” She winks for good measure, revelling in Lena’s responding groan at the terribly overused pun. “I’ll get aspirin too.” Kara calls as an afterthought, not missing the relieved sigh that pours from Lena’s lips at the news.

Kara spends the rest of her morning listening to Lena tell her in overexcited gesticulates and sentences that blend into one another all about her new device, about all the ways she hopes it’ll benefit her company, and the city, and hopefully even the world.

They don’t leave the comfort of Kara’s bed until Lena receives a call (and a dozen messages) from Jess informing her there’s a meeting she’s supposed to be at in thirty minutes and if she needs a car sent to Kara’s apartment (Kara doesn’t even question how Jess knows exactly where Lena is without asking – she puts it down to a smidge of Lena’s predictability and Jess’ apparent magical abilities).

And the next time Lena creates something amazing, she doesn’t walk to the bar with automatic feet and a spring in her step to find solace in the half-hearted praise of strangers too drunk to really understand what’s going on, and instead dials for Kara. Kara who’s more than happy to oblige her in a hastily decorated (and definitely incorrectly spelled) congratulations cake and a hug that goes on for far longer than a normal one should.

(Lena much prefers the latter.

So does Kara).

* * *

 

Kara thought she was getting used to it. Correction. Kara was getting used to it. She was used to the light-hearted mumbled compliments and the half-confessions disguised as slightly more intense compliments but she wasn’t ready for this, had no chance to get used to this, really didn’t think that she was going to be able to handle this.

This being Lena appearing at her door out of nowhere with a half empty bottle dangling precariously from her fingers and a shocked expression on her face. At first Kara simply blames it on the fact that Lena has never seen her like _this_ before.

Once again _this_ being Kara actually looking like the human she claimed to be for once. After a particularly gruelling fight she’d solar-flared and, after the initial five minutes of almost burning a hole in the DEO floor with her pacing, she decided to think about the upsides of this whole ordeal.

Now, most people might have considered the upside being able to actually hug somebody with all her might and not crush their bones (Kara didn’t not consider that an upside, she likes to think Alex quite enjoyed it too, and Winn when she pulled him in for a group hug). Or maybe just the fact that she could completely lose her focus and still only hear the sounds of things going on in her immediate vicinity (that also was pretty great, Kara doesn’t even dare think about the amount of times she’d accidentally overhead people doing... _that_ ).

But ultimately the thing Kara most wanted to do when she’d solar flared was work out and genuinely feel the pull of her muscles, feel the weights in her hand like they were actually something, enjoy something so stupidly mundane that absolutely no one else would put it at the top of their list.

Which is what left Kara like this - sweaty, and panting, and more than a little dishevelled but still managing a bright smile when she finds it’s Lena behind the knock on her door.

Lena who she attempts to usher inside but who is steadfastly rooted to her spot in the doorway, jaw hanging silently open for a good twenty seconds before a groan slips out and she says, with far too much flippancy for the content, “if you get any more attractive I’ll have to fuck you.”

And then she just slips right through the door and into Kara’s apartment and Kara, well Kara is suddenly the one left slack-jawed, the one who just stops. Stops moving. Stops breathing. Truly stops breathing.

When Kara got to Earth, when she finally got acclimated enough to be curious, she tested a lot of things - she and Alex tested how much she could carry (explaining away how neighbours had somehow seen a teenage girl lift a cow had been interesting), they measured how far she could jump and how much she could see through with her x-ray vision (Kara doesn’t even want to begin to talk about the things she’d seen that summer), how quickly her freeze breath could work its magic.

They still tested things now, checked how she was adapting, evolving, changing.

But Kara never even once considered to think if she needed to breathe.

She feels light-headed as she stands there, looking out into the empty corridor of her apartment building, and wondering if her lungs are supposed to feel like they’re being rubbed with sandpaper, if her vision is supposed to be getting a little hazy, if it’s actually possible to clear your mind of everything except for one single thought (one single person).

Kara takes a deep breath as she closes the door, grounding herself with the feel of the wood beneath her fingers before she turns to see what state Lena is in inside. She has to laugh when she finds Lena sprawled face first, legs in a mess, on her couch because of course that’s how Lena would follow up that comment, of course that was how ridiculous this whole thing had gotten (and of course she still managed to make Kara’s heart find an irregular rhythm).

Kara tucks Lena into her bed with the knowledge that this won’t be spoken about tomorrow but that the words will be playing on repeat in her mind for the rest of her existence.

(And then some more in the afterlife just for good measure).

* * *

 

Kara wakes up with a mouth like cotton and a pounding head that feels a little like her brain has come to life and suddenly decided it doesn’t like the accommodations. She also hates the sun. Logically she catches sight of it sneaking through thins curtains and feels relief at the thought that this feeling won’t last too long, but she also feels disdain at it for daring to be so bright and so in her face. She groans as she turns further away and into the pillow.

Reminder to self to never let Alex talk you into a drinking competition when alien alcohol was available. Arguably in her top five worst ideas, just behind casually walking into an armed hostage situation without any powers. A spark of pain shoots through her head. Maybe just before it.

Kara wakes up in a bed that isn’t her own. Not that she actually notices that at first, or in the following two minutes of her being alive to the waking world. It takes her another few seconds to recognise it as Lena’s and once it does it seems so obvious to Kara - it smells like the perfume she uses, the one that always announces Lena’s arrival in a room before she’s even quite there, like Cleopatra soaking the sails of her ships, and there’s softness to the sheets that Kara’s own Bed, Bath and Beyond set doesn’t quite have, a softness that seems wasted considering Lena rarely actually makes it this far in a normal sleep routine.

That and the curtains actually meet in the middle.

Oh and the fact that when she braves sitting up she finds Lena curled into herself on the armchair in the corner, eyes looking towards Kara but not actually seeming to see anything at all, hands clutched round a coffee cup, and a loose t-shirt draped over her torso leaving her legs bare - something that Kara doesn’t allow herself to dwell on for once because the look on Lena’s face tells her it’s not the time to be focusing on how gay she is for her best friend.

“Lena?” The single word seems to break the namesake from her daze, enough that she takes a sip from her coffee and winces, affronted, when she discovers it no longer hot. Kara briefly wonders how long she’s been sitting there, stone still and stone faced. She feels panic rise in her chest as she tries to recall how she got here, what she might have done to cause any of this - a question that must be evident on her face because Lena moves to fill in the blanks without prompt as she discards her unwanted cup on the floor.

“You called me to pick you up from the bar. I got Alex home safely but you refused to come anywhere but here.” Kara blushes. _Oh how the tables had turned._

“Sorry about that, and for taking your bed hostage. Please tell me you didn’t sleep on that chair.” Lena adopts a guilty look and Kara knows that the actual answer is that Lena didn’t really do much sleeping at all last night. “What were you doing this time that was more important than sleeping?”

“You told me something last night. I imagine you don’t remember because you’re acting remarkably blasé about this whole thing but I do. I remember what you said and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since, couldn’t stop thinking about it even if I tried, and I did try when I made that god-awful cup of coffee and all that really happened was I burned my finger on the pot and-“

Kara interrupts, attempting to offer a teasing smile that she knows ultimately ends up in nothing of the sort. “Lena, you’re rambling. That’s kind of my thing.”

“And drunkenly admitting my feelings was apparently mine but you stole that from me last night.”

“I...” Kara trails off because she has no idea how she’s supposed to reply to that. She was used to being able to revise and backtrack her words when she wrote articles, wasn’t all that good at figuring herself out in real time - hence the rambling - she always just kind of hoped she’d find her point somewhere in the middle of everything and someone would nod along.

“I didn’t forget,” Lena says quickly and it takes Kara to process exactly what that means, exactly why Lena is saying the words with such gravitas.

She feels a lick of anger beneath her confusion when the truth settles in, as Lena rushes to continue with her explanation. “I woke up the first time so embarrassed and I just figured it would be best for both of us, for the sake of our friendship, if we could sweep it under the rug and you didn’t bring it up so I thought perhaps you didn’t want to acknowledge it either. And then I just kept getting worse and escalating it because I’m an idiot when I drink apparently, and I have exactly zero filtering capabilities when I have tequila, and please never let me have it again, and _god_ I told you that I wanted to _fuck_ you and I’m so sorr-“

“I liked it,” Kara interrupts. “I mean, I felt a little bit like you’d dipped me in a fire pit out of the blue but I wasn’t opposed to the comment. Or any of them actually, but I suppose you may have gathered that from whatever I said last night, which is kind of embarrassing and ultimately incredibly annoying because I was actively avoiding confronting you about the things you said because I thought you deserved the chance to say them sober, _I thought I deserved to hear them with you sober_. But instead I got drunk and spilled the proverbial beans like an idiot.”

And just like that Kara watches the tension melt from Lena’s shoulders, her legs sliding onto the floor and her arms uncrossing with a visual sigh of relief.

“So we’re both idiots?”

“So it would seem.”

“Okay, well, this idiot, having not had anything to drink in the last twenty-four hours, would just like to put it out there that she’s in love with you, Kara Danvers, and also that you look incredibly attractive when you work out, and every other time.” Kara finds a wide smile painting itself onto her lips and honestly she doesn’t even care that it somehow makes her head hurt more.

“That’s good because this idiot is in love with you too, Lena Luthor, and is having a really hard time not looking at your legs right now because they seem oddly endless considering how short you are,” Kara jokes, allowing the pillow Lena throws to hit her in the face like a champ, despite seeing it coming from a mile off. “Maybe you should follow the pillows lead and get over here.”

“It might take me a while what with my tiny legs and all that,” Lena quips in reply but stands nevertheless, almost shyly making her way over to Kara despite what they both just confessed. She ends awkwardly at the side of the bed, only sitting down when Kara tugs her onto the bed – a move which Lena seems to take as approval for contact, her fingers gently brushing stray hairs from Kara’s face, smiling softly as she watches her thumb draw shapes on Kara’s skin.

“I really want to kiss you but I can still taste the tequila on my tongue from last night and a certain birdy told me to never let them have it again.”

“I think I can make an exception this once.” Lena kisses her before she can even think of a reply, or doing it herself, and Kara’s immediate thought is that she could totally handle a hangover again if it always meant she found herself with Lena in the morning, hypnotised by her lips and held captive by hands that hold no force, only curiosity and a tenderness that people never usually afforded Kara – one that makes her feel like she has the capacity to break, one that almost made her want to just to have Lena gather up her pieces.

It’s their first kiss.

It’s not their last.

Kara finds herself kissing Lena all day now that she can. They make breakfast and Kara kisses her until they smell burning bacon, and then Lena gets excited about the crossword and Kara kisses her until the pen in Lena’s wandering hand snaps and she feels ink drip onto her body. She kisses her at the most important part of a movie neither of them has ever seen before and when Lena gasps as she remembers she got Kara’s favourite chips at the store the other day.

And when Lena asks what time it is.

And when Kara replies that it’s just a little after nine.

Being drunk was a foreign concept to Kara for much of her life.

But she thinks she finally understands it when she’s under the influence of Lena.


End file.
